Chapter 11 — End of Line Bus 08

The drizzling rain of Saigon noon obscures the flashing signs on the streets. Huy sat down on an old tire, leaning against the grease-stained wall of a long-closed auto repair workshop in District 4. This was the "safe house" that Tue had promised - an old mechanical workshop owned by her distant uncle, who had settled abroad for many years.

A slight hiss sounded as the rusty iron folding door was pulled up a narrow space, just enough for one person to squeeze through. Tue walked in, shook off the soggy paper raincoat, and threw it into the trash can in the corner of the workshop. Her face was tense, her eyes were dark circles from lack of sleep.

"Is Mr. Ba safe?" Huy stood up and asked immediately.

"For now," Tue replied simply, pulling an empty drum to use as a chair. "I hand-delivered him to Lieutenant Phong at the basement entrance of the City Police headquarters. But Phong just texted a message through an encrypted application: his boss, a Deputy Chief of Department, began to ask harsh questions about why Phong accepted a suspect who was not part of the assigned case, and requested that Mr. Ba be handed over to another working group to investigate."

Huy gritted his teeth. Dai Nam's octopus tentacle stretched longer than he thought. They not only control the press but also have deep roots in law enforcement.

"Mr. Ba can't stay there for long," Huy said, briefly telling Tue about the betrayal at the editorial office and how he was almost arrested by his own Editor-in-Chief.

After listening, Tue did not show any surprise, just smiled faintly. "Your world, people wearing suits and sitting in air-conditioned offices, turns out to be just as dirty as the industrial landfill where gangsters burn bodies. Now what? Losing the press, losing the police, are you going to carry this USB and stand in the middle of the pedestrian street screaming for everyone to hear?"

"No," Huy shook his head, his eyes flashing with cold light. "If the official system has been bribed, we will fight them with game rules outside the system. We need an information dissemination channel that cannot be removed, not subject to censorship by any power. And we need iron evidence, naming the mastermind."

"There are secretly recorded videos and books on the hard drive? Isn't that enough?"

"It's not enough to defeat a guy like Bui Thanh Long. What we have now is only enough to arrest the directors of Hung Thinh subcontracting company. Long will sacrifice them as pawns, blame the greed of his subordinates, pay a large sum of money and continue to be an innocent 'tycoon'. I need to find the huge money transfer orders, the secret documents directly connecting Bui Thanh Long's personal account with the shady payments for the purchase. chemicals and hiring gangsters." Huy took out the USB. "On the hard drive there is a military-grade AES 256-bit encrypted partition. I bet what we need is in there."

"Who can unlock it?" Tue asked.

"I know someone."

An hour and a half later, they were at a shabby internet cafe located deep in a winding alley in the Cau Muoi area. The shop was dark, filled with the smell of cheap cigarette smoke and sour sweat. Dozens of young people are glued to the screen, screaming and cursing in role-playing games.

Huy led Tue towards the inner corner Finally, there was a skinny young man with long, messy hair, wearing a faded black T-shirt, typing at a terrifying speed in front of three screens flashing green lines of code.

"K," Huy called softly.

The young man stopped and slowly turned around. His eyes, dull from lack of sleep, suddenly sharpened when he recognized Huy. K - no one knows his real name - is one of the most notorious gray hat hackers in the Saigon underworld. Huy saved K from a complicated cyber security case a few years ago with an investigative report that exonerated him, and since then K has always owed Huy a favor.

"Mr. Huy," K nodded, reaching out to stroke his loose hair. "Are you on the run? Your face is being hunted down on secret social forums. The price on your head is three hundred million. As for this girl," K glanced at Tue, "she must be the female bus driver."

"I need you to crack an AES 256-bit encryption partition. And distribute a data packet to the Dark Web network and anonymous servers abroad, in a way that no force in Vietnam can take down," Huy got straight to the point, placing the USB on K's desk.

K picked up the USB, turned it around in his hand, and smirked. "AES 256-bit? You think I'm the NSA's quantum supercomputer? It would take years to brute-force crack it, unless... you have some clue about the password, or the person who set the password is an idiot who made basic mistakes."

"The person who set the password is Dinh Trong Quy, a surveying engineer. He stole this data from the company server, so I guess the password will be related to what he was most obsessed with before he died." Huy said.

Huy opened his phone and showed K a photo of engineer Quy's abandoned room. "Try strings of numbers related to geographical coordinates, foundation depth, or the birth dates of his wife and children."

K plugged the USB into the computer, his fingers dancing on the keyboard. The three screens in front of him immediately switched to black command windows. Strings of characters run across the screen like a waterfall.

"Interesting," K muttered. "This engineer is not stupid. He used a multi-layer hashing technique. But he left an extremely elementary 'backdoor' in the password generation algorithm, as if he... wanted someone to find it."

"How long?" Tue asked impatiently.

"Two hours. Maybe three." K snapped his fingers. "In the meantime, you two should find a hidden place to hide. This shop is not safe if the hunting dogs can smell it."

Huy and Tue retreated to a hidden corner behind the soft drink refrigerator, sat on the floor, leaning on each other in tense silence. Every minute that passes feels like a century. The Dai Nam gang can attack at any time.

Nearly three hours later, K suddenly stood up and pushed the swivel chair back. "Fuck!" He cursed once, his face was cut without a drop of blood.

Huy and Tue rushed over.

"Can you open it?" Huy asked urgently.

"It's open," K gulped, pointing to the middle screen. "I have cracked the password. It is a string combining the coordinates of the center of Block B and the engineer's wedding date. But Mr. Huy... what you intend to announce is not just a murder or a landfill. This is... a genocide."

Huy stared at the screen. Those were not financial documents as he expected. That is the overall design drawing (Master Plan). The entire Dai Nam Dong Super Project, including Phase 2, has never been announced to the public.

"Look at this groundwater distribution diagram," K zoomed in on a blue geological drawing. "The current chemical landfill at the foundation of Block B is just a prelude. Dai Nam Dong's Phase 2 plan, which will start construction tomorrow, is located exactly above the largest underground water pocket in the eastern part of the city."

K clicked on the keys, bringing up an analysis table. "If they continue to apply the method of burying heavy industrial waste in Phase 2 to save on foundation costs, extremely toxic chemicals such as Cyanide, Lead, and Mercury will seep directly into this underground water pocket within six months. This water source provides domestic water for three neighboring districts, with millions of people living. At that time, it is no longer a matter of collapsing a building, but of slowly poisoning millions of people through the water source."

Both Huy and Tue seemed frozen. The scale of the crime was far beyond what they could have imagined. This is not just the endless greed of a tycoon, but also cruelty to the point of inhumanity.

"When does the groundbreaking ceremony for Phase 2 take place?" Tue asked, her voice shaking.

"Tomorrow morning at nine," Huy replied, not taking his eyes off the screen. "There will be high-ranking city officials attending the ribbon cutting. Bui Thanh Long will definitely be there."

"I can't wait to send this investigation report and wait for the government to handle it," K said, sweat beading on his forehead. "Once they start construction and pour the first batch of concrete for the foundation, everything will be hopeless. You have to stop that groundbreaking ceremony."

Huy looked at Tue. The young driver's eyes flared up with an unprecedented fire of anger. It is no longer a matter of investigation or discovery. This is a war to protect life.

"K, please pre-program an automatic distribution command (Dead man's switch). Release the entire data package, design documents, video evidence, including Bui Thanh Long's confidential financial transactions to all major social networks, international newspapers, and the dark web. Set the time for ten o'clock tomorrow morning," Huy ordered, his voice sharp.

"Why ten o'clock? Why not spread it now?" K wondered.

"Because if they release it now, they will have an excuse to postpone the groundbreaking ceremony, destroy evidence and try to flee abroad," Huy replied. "We will let Bui Thanh Long stand on the podium of glory, in front of hundreds of media cameras, at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. And then, we will make him pay for his crime right there."

"What are you going to do?" Tue asked.

Huy pulled the folding knife out of his pocket and ran his fingers over the cold blade. "We'll attend that groundbreaking ceremony. Our way."